


Independent Together

by MadameReveuse



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Feelings Realization, Gift Giving, M/M, Melkor flails his way into a courtship of sorts, Trust, hot takes on Maiar and servitude, seduction of mairon, Ósanwe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:01:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26471566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadameReveuse/pseuds/MadameReveuse
Summary: Mairon finds himself repeatedly visited by the Dark Vala, who starts offering him things he knows he cannot have.
Relationships: Morgoth Bauglir | Melkor/Sauron | Mairon
Comments: 5
Kudos: 67





	Independent Together

**Author's Note:**

> My first fic in the Tolkien fandom! Whew! Tolkien's works have been with me since childhood, but I never felt I had anything to add to the fandom. Until now!!
> 
> I've kind of taken my Paradise Lost headcanons about angels over here: same shit, pointier ears. Mairon is still not a wonderful person: he's down for attaining a dominion of his own alongside Melkor, he's not looking to liberate anyone else. As long as he gets his, he's golden. As for Melkor, does he believe in freedom only for himself and the one person who means something to him, and is fine enslaving other folks? Or is there more to orcs than we were told? Vote now on your phones

Mairon is working on a circlet when the Dark Vala first makes his offer.

“What is it you’re crafting?” he asks, hovering over Mairon’s shoulder, casting a jealous, covetous gaze at his work. “Who is it for?”

“It is a gift intended for Lord Aule,” Mairon replies, abandoning all pretense of activity, tilting his body backwards from the fire of the forge, disgruntled as the Dark One grabs his project and lifts it, white-hot and just beginning to cool, to inspect it up close. The heated metal does not singe him. It seems that the most unforgiving of elements cannot harm the Dark Vala, the biting ice does not sting him, the unremitting flame does not burn him. His large, dark hands darken further upon contact with the heat, the veins beneath the skin pulsing and lighting as though filled with molten lava. Mairon admonishes himself not to stare. 

(Oh, they will find out what it takes to harm Melkor’s hands. They will find out in time.)

“It is a nice trinket,” the Dark One says, his dismissive tone setting Mairon’s teeth on edge. “I have never seen Aule wear jewelry,” he adds.

“That as may be,” Mairon says, keeping his voice blandly emotionless. It is true. All precious gems and metals are at Lord Aule’s purview, and yet, when clothed in physical form, he goes in his simple, robust leather apron, adorned with a few occasional beads in his hair and beard and no jewelry besides. Aule is constantly at work, and cannot afford forging accidents caused by finery getting caught or snagging somewhere.

“It does not suit you toiling away at producing trinkets nobody will have use for,” the Dark One states. 

Mairon shrugs. “My Lord will appreciate a token of his Maia’s devotion, whether he wears it or not.”

“How many Maiar does Aule have? How many tokens of devotion?” The Dark One looks at Mairon down his nose. “There are grander things to be crafted,” he adds without waiting for Mairon’s answer.

“In time,” Mairon says.

“Now,” the Dark One corrects. “If you were to come to my kingdom, you and I could begin the shaping of the world in earnest.”

“Lord Aule would hardly permit such a thing,” Mairon says dryly.

“Forget Lord Aule,” says the Dark One. “Come with me, learn from me, aid me and see your craft soaring to heights you can now scarcely even imagine.”

He goes on a rather lengthy, rambling tangent on all the things he means to build, extolling the excitements of his machinations, the pleasure of freedom to work as one wills without direction from anybody, the satisfaction of the Dark One upon getting what he perceives to be his due. To Mairon, his words sing of love of himself, and little besides. To his mind, the Dark Vala needs a speechwriter rather more urgently than a smith, but he holds his tongue and does not say so.

“I must decline,” he says.

The Dark Vala’s eyes go wide and round. He had not expected being denied.

“I am no lost and stumbling spirit you may entice to your side,” Mairon continues. “I am in good standing here. I serve my Vala well, and see no need to forsake him and the life I know for another.”

The Dark Vala looms suddenly much closer, one hand setting the circlet down, the other reaching, touching, winding a lock of Mairon’s hair around his index finger. Mairon holds himself still. Maiar do not usually disallow touches from any Vala, for who would decline the loving caress of their gods? But surely the Dark One is an exception, surely here it may be permitted to resist.

“But I have observed you,” the Dark One says. “I have seen your potential, and you are easy on the eyes as well… do you not yearn, as I do, for something more than this predetermined path, laid out for us by small minds of limited imagination?”

His voice is a dark, deep murmur in Mairon’s ear, husky and rich. Mairon remembers when he heard it first, reverberating with the Discord. He rears away before he can fluster, yanking his hair out of the Vala’s grip. “I yearn for nothing of yours,” he snaps.

* * *

“You are still observing me,” Mairon says, his mouth drawn into a tight frown. The Dark Vala is at his forge again, leaning faux-casually against the anvil, and Mairon has not bowed upon entering and seeing him there, has not tacked any honorific onto his statement. The Dark Vala doesn’t request it.

“’Tis so,” Melkor admits unabashedly, in a tone of voice as if he’s talking about the weather. “What am I to say? You fascinate me. Aule has many Maiar, but you… I see a fire within you that’s unique to yourself.”

Mairon crosses his arms. “I am not different from anybody else,” he says, his voice as frigid as the gales Melkor will conjure on occasion.

“Ah, but isn’t that the problem?” the Dark Vala asks.

Not wishing to look at him, Mairon busies himself donning his protective gear for the work ahead. “I do not see any problem apart from you pestering me.”

It should have earned him rage and rebuke, this open disrespect towards a Vala. What he gets is a huff of laughter. 

“But you are not happy here,” Melkor then says, sobering. 

“What would you know about my happiness?” Mairon asks, perhaps more sharply than he had intended.

“I watch. I listen. You keep apart from the others, you stay in the forge all day and late into the night. And you have a look about you of one driven.”

Driven, is he? Well, perhaps. “I wish to excel at my work. This is not abnormal nor unusual.”

“You strive for greatness, and they have you tinkering with jewelry. Shiny little baubles, made to be pretty and useless.”

“I like my craft,” Mairon almost snarls. Why does he feel like he’s being put on the defensive? What must he justify to the Dark One? He turns his back on Melkor and pretends to be immersed in selecting tools from his kit.

“Oh, aye,” Melkor says dismissively. “But don’t tell me you have never wished to expand your repertoire? To shape the very bones of Arda to your liking? To be instrumental to that grand undertaking? Do you not wish to be _unfettered_?”

Safely with his back to the Dark Vala, Mairon rolls his eyes. Is this the kind of talk that has led other Maiar to abandon Aman to stand by Melkor’s side? “’Tis no use wishing for what cannot be.”

“But it can,” Melkor husks, so clearly in love with the sound of his own voice. “If you come to my realm with me, you will taste of freedom - ah, bah, taste? You will drink deeply of it, yet never slake your thirst. It’s impossible to get one’s fill of true independence, once enjoyed, but oh, how heady…”

Mairon’s hands are gripping the edge of his workbench, fingers clenching tightly. Why is this empty prattle getting to him? “You have no idea of what you speak,” he grits out.

He turns around to see Melkor raise an eyebrow. “Oh, indeed?”

“How can you possibly? You’re a _Vala_.”

Melkor straightens from his affected nonchalant slouch. “That… was quite a lot of venom.”

Mairon sighs. “You cannot know what it is like. You were put upon Arda to rule it. You cannot know what it is to be created from nothing and immediately be told to serve. To get assigned a master, and a duty, and what you will learn, and what you are to devote your existence to, for eternity and beyond. They say it is a blessing, a privilege, that the Valar in their grace and Eru in his wisdom have put all Maiar in their places, adorned us with these powers… it doesn’t occur to the others to yearn for anything beyond what they were given… but all I see are shackles. Shackles the likes of which you and your ilk have never worn.”

“If you–” Melkor begins.

“You ask me to forsake Lord Aule and join your court? Why? To exchange one slavedriver for another? Here at least I get to subsist and carry out my servitude in comfort, and Lord Aule is nice to me when he remembers I exist. You wish me to forsake my standing here and join you in the wild? What can you offer me but the life of an outcast, despised by all? And what would you use me for, if you had me? Wanton destruction, or so I hear? Oh, that would _certainly_ render me more useful than my current work. Nay,” Mairon cried, “there is nothing you may tempt me with. I will abide here, and hopefully get a chance to contribute to the shaping of Arda in some small, insignificant manner, if nothing else. So do not speak to me of freedom, when all you offer is more servitude.”

Melkor has grown quite still. He blinks. “I… had never considered this.”

“Of course not.” Mairon feels quite out of breath. A distant part of him is panicking, he realizes, his head abuzz, his chest tight, as if an iron vice is clamping down on it. He has never told anyone these deepest, most heretical thoughts of his. Why then, with the Dark One, did it seem so easy? 

“Remove thyself from my workplace,” he grits out through clenched teeth. “Do not approach me with thine offer again.”

Melkor steps back from the anvil, inclines his head in acknowledgement, and sweeps out of the room. Mairon sags against his workbench, his knees as rubber.

* * *

“Mairon.”

Mairon wonders where the Dark Vala goes, when he’s not here in the forge harangueing him. Does he have a place to stay? He hinted at some realm of his own existing on Arda. Mairon is not privy to the knowledge of its whereabouts.

He doesn’t ask. He crosses his arms, the solid and comforting weight of the anvil at his back. “I thought I made my reception of your offer quite clear. I will alert the guards if you persist.” He resorts back to a more formal mode of address. He is determined not to slip up and proclaim overfamiliarity with the Dark Vala again. 

“I understood you well,” says Melkor. “You wish to remain here. Yet, my fortress will still need a smith.”

“Lord Aule has many Maiar,” Mairon reminds them once more.

“Ah, but I want the best,” Melkor replies. “I want excellence. I want that flame in you, undimmed by whatever chains you here.”

“You are going to take me by force?” Mairon asks.

Melkor snorts, as if Mairon had made a joke in poor taste. “Certainly not, no. But if you are not to be mine, at least your artifice must be. Oh, simmer down, little flame, I will not repeat my offer. I only ask to let me linger, for a short while, and observe your work. To learn from you, so as to pass the ways of your craft on to other, more willing souls.”

Mairon must admit, he had not expected this. He is taken aback. “ _Teach_ a _Vala_? That is… unheard of.”

Melkor shrugs. “Why does that matter?”

Now Mairon rolls his eyes openly. He is beginning to take the measure of Melkor, and suspects that he will not be punished for such impudence. “You wish your presence in my space to build familiarity. You are counting on me growing attached to you and more receptive to your offer, provided you stay around long enough. This will not succeed.”

Melkor is not deterred in the slightest. One corner of his mouth quirks upwards in a crooked grin. “Perhaps it will, perhaps it won’t. Either way,” he repeats, “my fortress will attain a smith.”

So Melkor hovers as Mairon finishes the circlet, asking questions about the process, about how Mairon would go about making other things. It takes several days, in which they meet. Melkor learns the name of every tool in Mairon’s toolbox, their feel in his hands and their multiple uses. He attempts to resist it at first, but Mairon feels himself growing bolder in Melkor’s presence, and soon entrusts the Dark Vala with little tasks: stoking the fire, compressing the bellows, fetching red-hot iron from the forge with his bare hands. Melkor should by rights complain about the menial work that is so beneath him; he never does. He watches, grows absentminded, fiddles with his fingers or the hem of his robe, hums snatches of songs, and apologizes - a Vala, apologizing to a Maia! - for his flighty attention.

The circlet is soon finished, and Mairon contemplates giving it to Aule, this work that has become of his and Melkor’s hands, and it feels wrong. For a moment, he considers giving it to Melkor, and banishes that thought.

* * *

Once the circlet is finished, Melkor stays away.

Days turn to weeks and Mairon wonders if it is true, if the Dark Vala has given up and rescinded his offer, if he has taken Mairon at his word and will not appear again. He feels content in that thought. He feels relieved. He feels, perhaps, lonesome. He feels as though an opportunity has passed him by. _Opportunity for nothing much,_ he tells himself sternly, and crushes those foolish thoughts.

One night, Mairon is the last one in the forge and considering turning in for a few hours, Melkor reappears. He is carrying an object wrapped in cloth, and looks preoccupied.

“I have given thought to what you have told me,” he says, no greeting, no preamble.

“It is nice to see you too,” Mairon replies.

It actually gives the Dark Vala pause. “Is it? Nice to see me?” he asks, genuinely baffled. “Well, now. Ahem. Indeed. I was about to impart to you the thoughts I had.”

“I’m sure they will be riveting.” And not at all go on at length, Mairon adds mentally.

“I should hope so,” Melkor says. “You should sit.”

For lack of a chair, Mairon sits on the anvil. Melkor, meanwhile, takes up pacing.

“You were right,” says he. “I was wholly unprepared to see things in the way you see them. Yes, my siblings and I were instilled upon Arda with the knowledge that it is ours to rule by right. An existence for the purpose of servitude to another is different from anything I know.”

He releases a deep breath. “I can see why you chafe at it. Merely contemplating such an existence for a few brief moments rendered me disgusted.”

_Oh, splendid,_ Mairon remarks to himself. _He thinks I’m disgusting._

“Mairon, if you came with me, you would not have to live thus.”

_What?_

“I would see you instated in Utumno to rule by my side. Free to work and think and speak as you see fit, in servitude to no one.”

“Except for you.”

“No!” Melkor shakes his head. “I have servants enough, and I will have more. You, however, are different. For you I would have a different purpose. You see, I can sing a fortress out of the ground but I haven’t the mind to maintain it. I can persuade people to my cause, but can I see them situated, organize the many needs of a court, build and craft and make law? My kingdom needs more than a smith, it needs someone to maintain order, and I feel it might be you. Take your place by my side and rule with me whatever realms we shall have, and be elevated above all Maiar who would cower in subservience to my brethren. Be my Prince Regent, my Lieutenant, and we shall be in eternal covenant, and make our every choice together.”

Mairon had never thought to find… this anywhere, least of all with the Dark One. It is too good to be true.

He shakes his head. “Y-you lie.”

Of course. The Dark Vala has found what makes him tick, and is now looking to exploit it. He will lure Mairon to his keep with honeyed false promises, and then Mairon will be trapped. He should not have bared himself emotionally as he has. He should have been more cautious.

Melkor ceases his pacing. “Look into my mind and see that I speak true.”

Mairon rears upright to abruptly he almost topples off the anvil. “You mean… initiate _osanwe_? A Maia to approach a Vala? That… is against the natural order.”

Melkor shrugs. “What of the natural order? It needs reworking anyway. Look around you and tell me Eru didn’t do a rather shoddy job of it.”

A blasphemy. The arrogance of it. Mairon finds he isn’t too bothered.

He has never opened his mind to anyone, preferring to keep his own heretical thoughts closely guarded. He opens it now.

The mind of a Vala feels… different, and yet the same. There is more power there than Mairon could dream to possess, but at the same time… in some ways, it is not much vaster than his. In power, they may be unequal. In thought, in wisdom, in foresight or sagacity, they are not. Their basic make is similar, Ainur both of them. Something in Mairon settles.

There can be, for them, a meeting point. They can grow to understand one another. Know one another fully.

Yes, there is arrogance, plain in Melkor’s mind, a potent strain of self-worship, a kind of jilted entitlement towards his siblings and the realm of Arda, an inclination towards petty malice. There is chaos there aplenty, swirling maelstrom depths of thought and intuition and emotion that Melkor himself probably cannot hope to gauge, much less master. 

But, in his offer to Mairon, there is no deceit.

_I believe you,_ Mairon thinks, beyond astonished at finding this.

Melkor’s mind reacts with a sudden blinding flare of _reliefhopeglee._ In this mental space, he seems less guarded, because he blurts, _This fills me with joy._

Mairon laughs and withdraws.

“I believe you,” he says again out loud.

Melkor nods, appearing to try not to smile. Finally, he unwraps whatever he has been carrying wrapped in his dark cloak. It is a chest sung from dark wood. He flicks the clasps open, removes the lid and lowers himself to one knee.

He kneels, and Mairon is bewildered all over again.

From the chest, Melkor takes a circlet not unlike the one they have been making together, made from dark metal, inlaid with obsidian. Clearly it is the work of a beginner, one who has not yet had time to hone his smithing, but it is charming in its crudeness. It is obvious that some thought went into it, if not (yet) the height of artifice.

This Melkor sets on Mairon’s brow.

“My Prince Regent, steward of all my realms, ought to have a crown of his own,” Melkor says. “It does not come close to what you could create, but it is a start.”

The weight of it feels unusual, but not unpleasant.

Then Melkor removes from the chest a second object, wrought from the same material. It is a hammer fit for a master smith, simplistic but elegant designs adorning the hilt. It is not gem-encrusted and ostentatious, but something he could actually work with. This he proffers to Mairon also, who hefts it in his hands. The grip is decent, the weight and balance of the head about right. This then is why Melkor was so interested in examining Mairon’s tools.

“I knew you would want something of practical use,” Melkor says. “I hope that if you come with me, I will get to see wonders wrought with it. Not in my service, but to our mutual benefit and that of those that may follow us.”

Something practical.

Mairon is not inclined to romanticism. He prefers life neat and ordered, he prefers facts, figures and useful deeds to great, gushing avalances of emotion. He prefers to take life on and mold it - smelt it down and beat it, if necessary - into a favorable shape. Melkor must have seen this, and decided to gift him a tool to do the shaping with.

That and a crown, to win his freedom.

This is what Melkor has been doing while he was away: crafting a gift in a way Mairon would, to meet Mairon on his level.

And Mairon starts to believe, _Maybe I’ll be alright with him._


End file.
